The Savannah College of Art and Design’s SCAD deFINE ART 2022 will be presented Feb. 28 – March 2 with in-person and streaming events in Savannah and Atlanta.
The event will feature programs with international artists and a keynote conversation with honoree Katherina Grosse.
“SCAD deFINE ART is focused on exhibitions at the SCAD Museum of Art. Every February, we bring all new exhibitions to the museum from an international roster of artists. It’s one of the biggest moments of the year that we have at the museum,” said SCAD museum curator Ben Tollefso.
The international roster for the 13th edition of the university’s annual program brings together important voices in art and design from various countries including Canada, Cameroon, Germany, Iraq, South Korea, and the U.S. to share mind stimulating work and ideas.
“We bring everyone here for different kinds of programs, from panels to gallery talks with the artists. We do performances, we do classes as with students, all different kinds of things to celebrate these new shows and these artists that we think are making really important contributions to contemporary art right now,” said Tellefso.
The honoree Katharina Grosse is distinguished worldwide for her expansive use of the painting medium, challenging perceptions of surfaces and ideas of spectatorship and creating rich relations between colors, shapes, and elements of architecture and landscape.
Grosse’s exhibition Chill Seeping features large-scale works on canvas created between 2006 and the present, alongside an expansive site-related textile installation.
The exhibit will be up at the SCAD Museum of Art from Feb. 28 – July 11.
“Coinciding with the 10th anniversary of the opening of the SCAD Museum of Art, the world’s finest teaching museum, this year’s SCAD deFINE ART promises special magic. From honoree Katharina Grosse’s extraordinary paintings of incendiary color to Matthew Angelo Harrison’s sculptures that explore diasporic identities, SCAD deFINE ART 2022 both interrogates the zeitgeist and begets boundless beauty,” said SCAD president and founder Paula Wallace.
Tollefson is excited about Grosse’s exhibition as well as the three exhibitions he will be curating. One of the shows is by Norbert Bisky. Bisky is a German figurative painter living in Berlin. His work Mirror Society features chaotic explosions, ambiguous physical struggles between male figures, and nostalgic smiling young models exemplify the contradictory images in his paintings.
Hayv Kahraman is an Iraqi artist that now lives In LA. Karhraman’s work The Touch of Otherness are paintings that embody the intricacies of diasporic experience for women, Kahraman challenges the power and assimilation practices of colonizing states. Knowledgeable by her own experiences as an émigré from Iraq to Europe and her eventual settling in the U.S.
Carter Flachbarth, a 2020 SCAD graduate, is exhibiting Morality Sucks. This is his first museum exhibition. n Morality Sucks assembles Flachbarth recent paintings that cast an ambiguous male figure in numerous narratives, reflecting on anxieties and tensions founded in topical global events.
“It has been a really humbling experience to say the least,” said Flachbarth about his first museum exhibition. “I remember first attending SCAD and being intimidated by all of the talent. I remember thinking I would never be able to compete, so it’s been a wild experience to have a museum show at a premiere contemporary art museum like the SCAD Museum of Art. I am excited to be able to speak about the exhibition and inspire current students.”
On Monday, Feb. 28 at 2 p.m. Elaine Cameron-Weir and Carter Flachbarth join SCAD MOA adjunct curator Humberto Moro and Sang Hoon Kim’s gallerist Cristina Grajales for a gallery tour. On Tuesday, March 1 at 11 a.m. Matthew Angelo Harrison, Norbert Bisky, and Hayv Kahraman lead a gallery tour of their exhibitions.
“deFINE ART is our big kick off event, and it’s where we get to have everyone in town and we get to showcase programs that the public and students can connect with. If people miss the kick-off event that is fine because these shows will be up from anywhere between four and six months,” said Tollefso.
An opening reception takes place in Savannah at SCAD Museum of Art, Tuesday, March 1, at 6 p.m.
For more information about SCAD deFINE ART 2022, visit scad.edu/defineart
